ElBaradei set to become interim Egyptian prime minister in post-Morsi gamble for ‘reset’

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UPDATE: Egyptian officials are now distancing themselves from earlier reports that Mohamed ElBaradei will be Egypt’s next prime minister — that doesn’t incredibly change the analysis, though.  ElBaradei’s ties to the West, not to mention the other drawbacks mentioned below, help us understand why Egypt’s new military-backed government may have had second thoughts about ElBaradei, especially if they are hoping to bring Salafist Al-Nour Party leaders into the fold.

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Mohamed ElBaradei is set to become Egypt’s interim prime minister just four days after Mohammed Morsi was deposed as from the Egyptian presidency by the country’s armed forces.

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ElBaradei, the former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is a well-known figure whose international credibility runs far deeper than that of newly-installed interim president Adly Mansour, formerly the chief justice of the Egyptian constitutional court.  His selection as prime minister will bring instant gravitas to the emerging post-Morsi regime in Egypt, at least vis-à-vis the rest of the world.

But deploying ElBaradei into power is not risk-free — for either the new government or for ElBaradei’s reputation.

The danger is that his selection won’t be enough to ameliorate the governance crisis that has now accelerated with the Egyptian military’s decision to remove Morsi.  After all, though Morsi’s government had few allies after its troubled year in office, it’s hard to believe that the Muslim Brotherhood still doesn’t command the largest bloc of supporters within Egypt, and their wrath at the military’s turn against the Muslim Brotherhood may not be soothed by the appointment of any caretaker, no matter his seniority or even-handedness.  ElBaradei’s appointment comes just a day after pro-Morsi supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood staged a day of protest — the ‘Friday of rejection’ — demanding the return of Morsi to the presidency that met with tense, sometimes violent, resistance from the Egyptian military.  It’s too early to predict that Egypt is descending into a kind of civil war — despite a troubling lynching of four Shi’a Muslims last month, the largely Sunni Egypt doesn’t really feature strong Sunni-Shi’a schisms that have propelled sectarian violence more recently in countries like Iraq and Syria, and most Egyptians, even its more conservative Islamists, hold the military in high regard, for now at least.  But there’s no guarantee that ElBaradei can keep political violence from spiraling further out of control, propelling ever more turmoil to Egyptian industry, trade and tourism.

Even if no one will miss the ineptitude of the Morsi government, ElBaradei’s new power doesn’t come imbued with much of a mandate.  Though Egypt’s post-Mubarak transition was troubled from its inception, the successful conduct of free and fair presidential elections last summer was a key milestone on Egypt’s road toward a more democratic state.  While it’s true that the anti-Morsi protests had ballooned to a size even larger than those against Mubarak in February 2011, the more relevant factor is that Mubarak was never elected in a free election the way that Morsi was only a year ago.  So while political scientists debate whether last week’s events amounted to a coup (spoiler: yes, of course it was a coup, even if the U.S. administration doesn’t use the word ‘coup’), ElBaradei and his military supporters will come to power having undermined the most visible democratic credential that Egyptians could boast since the Arab Spring began.

By contrast, though French president François Hollande remains incredibly unpopular after just one year into a five-year term,  no one seriously thinks the French military is set to remove him from office to install a center-right president in France.  Moreover, ElBaradei will become Egypt’s new leader after having pulled out of last year’s presidential race, and it was not entirely clear that ElBaradei would have won in any event.  But it would have been better for the country today if ElBaradei had remained in the race to make a full-throated case for a secular, liberal democratic Egypt and to bring the fight to Morsi on the basis of the merits of his own ideas, not on the coattails of the military’s guns.

Unlike former foreign minister and Arab Council secretary-general Amr Moussa and former air force chief Ahmed Shafiq, ElBaradei is not tainted as felool — the ‘remnants’ of the government that Hosni Mubarak led from the 1980s until 2011.  But as the Tamarod (‘Rebellion’) movement has gathered steam in its efforts to oust Morsi, ElBaradei has managed to unite a disparate coalition of anti-Morsi interests, including Moussa, much of the former military establishment, elements of the so-called ‘deep state’ and supporters of former presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi, whose leftist, Nasser-style nationalism nearly vaulted him into last June’s presidential runoff.  If Monsour, ElBaradei and the new interim government succeed in organizing a new presidential election, Sabahi would certainly be the frontrunner to win it (unless ElBaradei himself runs, though he’s said he’s not interested in the presidency for himself).

As ElBaradei has noted in the days leading up to and following Morsi’s forced removal, the Morsi presidency was far from perfect — ElBaradei had routinely accused Morsi of becoming a ‘pharaoh’ in office, and he mocked Morsi’s Islamist agenda by noting acidly that ‘you can’t eat sharia.’  Though Morsi won only a narrow victory last June over Shafiq, he triumphed by assembling a broader coalition that transcended his own Muslim Brotherhood supporters, and, in recognition of that reality, Morsi initially called  for a broad inclusion of diverse views in formulating policies in office.  One of his first steps in August 2012, in firing longtime army chief and defense minister Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, and replacing him with Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, was an incredibly successful masterstroke, temporarily at least, in marrying the political interests of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian military.  Ironically, it was El-Sisi, who owed his position as commander-in-chief of the Egyptian armed forces to Morsi, who green-lighted the action that toppled Morsi.

But as Bassem Sabry explained in illuminating detail on Thursday in Al-Monitor, the clear point at which Morsi lost control over the country was his ill-fated decision last November to push through a vote on the country’s new constitution.   Continue reading ElBaradei set to become interim Egyptian prime minister in post-Morsi gamble for ‘reset’

In Depth: Egypt

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<See below Suffragio’s preview of Egypt’s July 2013 coup, followed by a real-time listing of all coverage of Egyptian politics.>

With the removal of Mohammed Morsi from the Egyptian presidency just days after completing his first year as Egypt’s first and only democratically elected president, the country seems set for a restart of its political, governance and social institutions at a time when its economic foundations continue to crumble.egypt_flag_new

Supported by the national military, interim president Adly Mansour and interim prime minister Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, will now face the task of pacifying a country still reeling from the effects of its February 2011 revolution and overthrow of strongman Hosni Mubarak, an elongated transition headed by the military’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and an experiment in a year of government by a duly elected president with strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Most immediately, Mansour and ElBaradei have pledged to hold new elections for both president and Egypt’s parliament, though they will face immediate concerns with respect to the Egyptian economy.

As Egypt begins to negotiate yet another phase of political and social uncertainty, you can follow Suffragio‘s prior coverage of the previous presidential election and the key moments of the Morsi administration below.

— July 6, 2013

Photo credit to Breeze Giannasio.

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Please note below Suffragio‘s prior coverage of Egyptian politics:

Egypt election results: Egypt has a new pharaoh
May 29, 2014

Voting will continue until the morale (and turnout) improves
May 27, 2014

How Egypt’s El-Sisi out-Nassered (and out-Sabahi’ed) Sabahi
May 23, 2014

Egypt’s El-Araby: ‘We don’t have an energy strategy’
April 10, 2014

El-Sisi finally announces presidential candidacy in Egypt
March 31, 2014

The official unofficial El-Sisi presidential continues in Egypt
March 21, 2014

Mubarakization-watch: Egypt referendum results
January 22, 2014

Egypt’s constitutional referendum enshrines re-Mubarakiztion
January 14, 2014

Egyptian massacre, ‘state of emergency,’ mocks Arab Spring with return to Mubarak-era tactics
August 14, 2013

Egypt 2013 is not Algeria 1991 (whew!), but that’s bad news for Egyptian democracy
August 6, 2013

Why the ultraconservative Salafi movement is now the key constituency in post-Morsi Egypt
July 9, 2013

ElBaradei set to become interim Egyptian prime minister in post-Morsi gamble
July 6, 2013

What comes next for Egypt
July 3, 2013

Will Egypt and Ethiopia come to blows over the Renaissance Dam and water politics?
June 26, 2013

El-Mursi Hegazy and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Egyptian economy
January 9, 2013

Morsi’s Egypt spirals further into chaos with apparent Dec. 15 constitutional referendum
December 3, 2012

Morsi: ‘We’re learning. We’re learning how to be free.’
November 29, 2012

Egyptian president Morsi caught in the crossfire in embassy riots kerfuffle
September 13, 2012

Morsi, in firing defense minister, asserts presidential control over Egypt
August 13, 2012

Egypt’s new government sworn in today featuring continuity from SCAF transitional government
August 2, 2012

Morsi announces surprise choice as new Egyptian prime minister
July 24, 2012

Former Mubarak intelligence chief Omar Suleiman has died
July 19, 2012

Forget PIMCO’s Mohamed El-Erian — Egypt’s new PM is likely to be Mahmoud Abul-Eyoun
July 18, 2012

Morsi and Shafiq both declare victory in Egypt as SCAF moves put transition in doubt
June 20, 2012

Morsi responds to Egypt parliament’s dissolution
June 14, 2012

The SCAF strikes back a day before Egypt’s presidential runoff
June 14, 2012

Sabahi, moderates, revolutionaries, secularists: all left behind in Egyptian presidential runoff
June 13, 2012

Final first-round Egypt election results
May 29, 2012

Sabahi wins Cairo, but not by enough to enter runoff
May 25, 2012

Felool me once, shame on you — Morsi-Shafiq nightmare runoff starts to take shape
May 25, 2012

Early returns indicate a possible Morsi-Shafiq runoff
May 25, 2012

Egypt runoff: Who is Ahmed Shafiq?
May 25, 2012

Egypt runoff: Who is Mohammed Morsi?
May 25, 2012

Television ads in the Egyptian presidential race
May 24, 2012

Second day of voting ends in Egyptian presidential election
May 24, 2012

Abdoul Fatouh v. Moussa v. Morsi v. Sabahi v. Shafiq: five vie for two runoff slots in unpredictable Egyptian race
May 23, 2012

In Depth: Egypt

egypt

With the removal of Mohammed Morsi from the Egyptian presidency just days after completing his first year as Egypt’s first and only democratically elected president, the country seems set for a restart of its political, governance and social institutions at a time when its economic foundations continue to crumble.egypt_flag_new

Supported by the national military, interim president Adly Mansour and interim prime minister Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, will now face the task of pacifying a country still reeling from the effects of its February 2011 revolution and overthrow of strongman Hosni Mubarak, an elongated transition headed by the military’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and an experiment in a year of government by a duly elected president with strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Most immediately, Mansour and ElBaradei have pledged to hold new elections for both president and Egypt’s parliament, though they will face immediate concerns with respect to the Egyptian economy.

As Egypt begins to negotiate yet another phase of political and social uncertainty, you can follow Suffragio‘s prior coverage of the previous presidential election and the key moments of the Morsi administration below.

Photo credit to Breeze Giannasio.

* * * * *

Egyptian massacre, ‘state of emergency,’ mocks Arab Spring with return to Mubarak-era tactics
August 14, 2013

Egypt 2013 is not Algeria 1991 (whew!), but that’s bad news for Egyptian democracy
August 6, 2013

Why the ultraconservative Salafi movement is now the key constituency in post-Morsi Egypt
July 9, 2013

ElBaradei set to become interim Egyptian prime minister in post-Morsi gamble
July 6, 2013

What comes next for Egypt
July 3, 2013

Will Egypt and Ethiopia come to blows over the Renaissance Dam and water politics?
June 26, 2013

El-Mursi Hegazy and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Egyptian economy
January 9, 2013

Morsi’s Egypt spirals further into chaos with apparent Dec. 15 constitutional referendum
December 3, 2012

Morsi: ‘We’re learning. We’re learning how to be free.’
November 29, 2012

Egyptian president Morsi caught in the crossfire in embassy riots kerfuffle
September 13, 2012

Morsi, in firing defense minister, asserts presidential control over Egypt
August 13, 2012

Egypt’s new government sworn in today featuring continuity from SCAF transitional government
August 2, 2012

Morsi announces surprise choice as new Egyptian prime minister
July 24, 2012

Former Mubarak intelligence chief Omar Suleiman has died
July 19, 2012

Forget PIMCO’s Mohamed El-Erian — Egypt’s new PM is likely to be Mahmoud Abul-Eyoun
July 18, 2012

Morsi and Shafiq both declare victory in Egypt as SCAF moves put transition in doubt
June 20, 2012

Morsi responds to Egypt parliament’s dissolution
June 14, 2012

The SCAF strikes back a day before Egypt’s presidential runoff
June 14, 2012

Sabahi, moderates, revolutionaries, secularists: all left behind in Egyptian presidential runoff
June 13, 2012

Final first-round Egypt election results
May 29, 2012

Sabahi wins Cairo, but not by enough to enter runoff
May 25, 2012

Felool me once, shame on you — Morsi-Shafiq nightmare runoff starts to take shape
May 25, 2012

Early returns indicate a possible Morsi-Shafiq runoff
May 25, 2012

Egypt runoff: Who is Ahmed Shafiq?
May 25, 2012

Egypt runoff: Who is Mohammed Morsi?
May 25, 2012

Television ads in the Egyptian presidential race
May 24, 2012

Second day of voting ends in Egyptian presidential election
May 24, 2012

Abdoul Fatouh v. Moussa v. Morsi v. Sabahi v. Shafiq: five vie for two runoff slots in unpredictable Egyptian race
May 23, 2012